Tagged: Yorkton
“Robot Boy” (1969-70?)
The show was called “Robot Boy” and I’m hoping at least some of you remember it.
Each episode was six or eight minutes long—it was really just filler so you never knew what time it would run. Anywhere from 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning until the “Star Trek” theme music cut in at 10:00 sharp. It’s possible the show was produced out of the nearest TV station, which was in Yorkton, about seventy miles away (the only channel that came in clear). “Robot Boy” had that really home made look, the production values pretty shabby. But I didn’t care. I was an avid fan. Hated it when I missed an episode, just about inconsolable for the rest of the weekend. Yeah, even then I was a bit of a diva.
The premise was stupefyingly simple: Robot Boy (really just a cheap, windup toy) is insatiably curious and one day wanders away from the safety of the toy box to seek adventure in the great, wide world. But unfortunately he soon gets lost and embroiled in various unfamiliar situations, trying to logically decipher what’s happening with his tiny robot brain. Some of the conclusions he reaches are hilarious, way off the mark. He’s totally naive when it comes to things that go on in real life.
There are shots of Robot Boy shuffling slowly down the sidewalk, going about 50 feet an hour, gigantic human shoes stepping over him, nearly knocking him into the gutter, legs moving past in the background, everyone oblivious to the lost little robot creeping through their midst.
My favorite episodes, the two I have the clearest memories of: Robot Boy is menaced by a ferocious dog…but interprets its behavior as a warning and thanks it profusely while the dog strains to reach the tin figure, just an inch or two out of reach. And there’s the episode where Robot Boy gets accidentally locked in a supermarket overnight and wanders up and down the aisles, admiring all the “exhibits” in the “museum”.
I Googled “Robot Boy” and found a few bloggers who reference the show. There’s even a loose association of people who post on forums, swapping old news and rumors. The main problem is there were only ten or twelve episodes of “Robot Boy” that were ever aired and no copies in any form seem to exist. Which gives even more weight to my conjecture that the show was locally produced. Maybe at one time it was even shot on videotape. But those tapes are long gone or erased and reused. There are still photos, grainy, not entirely convincing, their provenance unclear. Forum members are divided, the rhetoric sometimes heated. People are touchy when it comes to nostalgia. Some have gone to all the effort of building scale models of Robot Boy, their attention to detail bordering on the obsessive.
I made mine out of cardboard boxes I found in the garage. I was seven years old and the ugly duckling of the family…but when I slipped inside my cardboard costume I became Robot Boy. My other life forgotten, my human existence shed like an itchy, constricting skin suit, too tight in the crotch. The boxes smelled of apples and old newspapers. I hung my arms out holes I cut in the sides. Hands instead of pincers and an aluminum pie plate taped to the front, the dial sketched in with black marker.
I kept it in the basement, away from prying eyes. In a cubbyhole by the furnace, where my sisters would never look. My alter ego and guardian angel. Big and blocky and comforting. Made of indestructible metal. Powered by atomic cells. An obedient, loyal friend, willing to endure anything for me, even long hours in the dark. I loved him and he loved me. We understood each other. And when “Robot Boy” was canceled, I grieved and felt a genuine sense of loss and betrayal. I went down and I kicked the hell out out those boxes, kicked them to pieces. They never showed re-runs and I wouldn’t have watched them anyway. Robot Boy was dead to me. That part of my life was over…
*************************************************************
Beautiful Desolation 